Maria Ong, 72, of San Bernardino demonstrates how she backs up an electric wheelchair to her door at night to help prevent intruders from entering after the Dec. 2nd terrorist attack has made her very afraid.

Denver Cooley, pastor of Roadhouse Biker Church in San Bernardino.

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Maria Ong, 72, of San Bernardino rides her electric scooter up to her apartment in San Bernardino on Nov. 9. She now backs up an electric wheelchair to her door at night to help prevent intruders from entering after the Dec. 2nd terrorist attack has made her very afraid.

Tattooed and bandana-clad Denver Cooley, pastor of a church that caters to scary-looking motorcycle riders, was shaken by the Dec. 2 San Bernardino terrorist attack.

“I don’t think you can be in San Bernardino and not be changed by this,” said Cooley, who lives in the city and leads Roadhouse Biker Church, barely a mile from the Inland Regional Center, where the mass shooting took place.

“San Bernardino, we’ve never been an innocent city,” he said, in a chat before a recent church service. “But we’ve never been terrorized. Now, things are never going to be the same again.”

Like Cooley, residents of San Bernardino and nearby communities say life has changed now.

They look at people differently. They’ve bought window locks, shut their doors and brought in guard dogs to secure their homes. They’re extra vigilant in public. And they no longer think of terrorism as something that strikes in far-away places.

Brian Levin, director of Cal State San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, said the mass shooting that killed 14 and wounded 22 fundamentally changed how area residents view the world and the growing threat of domestic terrorism.

“The sense that this is something that happens somewhere else is now absent,” Levin said.

“Terrorism is a very-low-risk event nationally,” he added. “But when it strikes, it is devastating. Statistics get thrown out the window.”

Manijeh Badiee, assistant professor of psychology at Cal State San Bernardino and psychological assistant at Dr. Tanika Gayle & Clinical Associates in Riverside, said the attack deeply affected Inland residents.

“It has taken a while, I think, to heal, and especially for the survivors,” Badiee said.

‘RIPPLE EFFECT’

The attack has had a far-reaching impact on the entire Inland region, but one largely in proportion to how close one’s work or home is to the Hospitality Lane district where the attack occurred, Badiee said.

“It’s almost like a ripple effect,” she said. “In the center, it’s really big.”

With others, though, geography isn’t a factor.

Kate Sweeny, UC Riverside associate professor of psychology, said those who knew someone hurt or killed, or who worked at Inland Regional Center, were deeply affected no matter where they live.

On the other hand, Sweeny said she believes many, maybe even most, aren’t any more afraid than they were.

“My perspective is that, although people may perceive their risk as a bit higher than they used to, people — and risk perceptions — are quite resilient,” Sweeny said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if most people in this region have gone right back to where they were before the attack in terms of thinking about terrorism.”

Still, many were personally touched and won’t soon forget.

Take 43-year-old Laban Murithi.

He lives half an hour away in Eastvale, a young Riverside County city once full of dairlyands. The morning of Dec. 2, Murithi was playing the 10th hole at San Bernardino Golf Club, across Waterman Avenue from the center, when he heard the news.

“It was scary,” Murithi said.

A year later, he said, while teeing off recently, his thoughts often return to that morning.

“Sometimes when I drive by, my body tenses up,” he said.

FROZEN BY SIRENS

Mentone resident Paula Ready constantly tenses up. Every time she hears a siren. Every time she spots a helicopter.

And every time she takes the Mountain View Avenue exit off the 10 Freeway to her job as a San Bernardino County child support officer. She works a few blocks from the site of the shootout between police and the attackers.

“I almost just freeze until I can figure out where the sirens are coming from,” Ready said.

As for the freeway exit, Ready avoided it half a year. She drove an alternate route to work until summer.

“I still won’t drive north on Waterman,” she said.

“I haven’t been the same since. How do you ever get to be the same when six people you know are murdered in a few minutes. And someone you know did it?”

For Blake Guiterez, a 27-year-old Colton resident, what shook him was who did it.

Long ago, of course, the shooters were identified as Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, of Redlands. Farook worked as a county environmental health inspector five years.

Guiterez said the attack shattered the notion that mass shootings are carried out by suspicious, scary people who stand out in the neighborhood.

“What’s changed for me is that, I don’t know who to trust anymore,” he said. “Because the people who did this were just average neighbors.”

PARANOID OR DEAD?

While the San Bernardino attack underscored how hard it is to detect who’s planning an attack by observing one’s day-to-day lifestyle and actions, it spurred many to try to do just that.

Whether Cooley, the biker pastor, is meeting someone at a coffee shop, shopping at a mall or gathering with throngs of fellow motorcycle riders, he’s constantly scanning for suspicious activity.

“I’m always trying to read body language,” Cooley said. “I look for bulges in clothing. I guess it’s a level of paranoia. But you know what? I’d rather be paranoid than dead.”

When Corey Durbin arrives at a public place, she sizes it up and scopes out escape routes.

“I am way more aware of my surroundings,” Durbin said.

But the Riverside mom is hardly afraid to venture outside.

She’s taken her family to Disneyland and Magic Mountain, and to the Los Angeles County Fair. The bag checks and metal detectors ubiquitous at such attractions make her feel safe, she said.

As for Ready, she said she intentionally sits by the aisle at church and in movie theaters so “I can get up and leave.”

San Bernardino resident Vianey Zavala said, for the most part, she avoids public gatherings in her hometown.

‘SCARED TO GO OUT’

Maria Ong, 72, a retired high school math teacher who lives in a senior housing complex in downtown San Bernardino, rarely goes out in public anymore — save for celebrating Mass at next-door St. Bernardine Catholic Church.

“I’m scared to go out,” she said.

That fear extends to her high-rise apartment. Ong said she braces her power wheelchair against the front door at night before going to bed, to prevent someone from breaking in.

There are others who’ve taken steps to protect homes.

Perhaps an unlikely member of that group is burly Jose Gonzalez, a 43-year-old San Bernardino man who works at a children’s group home in Beaumont.

“I live in a gang-infested neighborhood,” said the father of four daughters.

And he’s never been afraid. Until Dec. 2.

“To be hit by a terrorist attack? A mass shooting? It makes me feel unsafe now,” he said.

Gonzalez said he went out and bought a guard dog: a blue-nosed pit bull whom the family named Lokee.

IN THE MOVIES

Jose Barraza, a custodian for the San Bernardino City Unified School District, lives down the street from the shootout site.

That hit close to home. Too close. And it prompted an immediate change.

“We used to always leave the door open so that we could get a nice breeze,” Barraza said.

They’d open it right up to the time the family went to bed. Now it’s closed. Always.

“Who would have thought it was going to happen so close to home?” Barraza said of the shootout. “Those are the kinds of things you see in movies.”

Then there’s Jack Asplund from Redlands.

He used to leave his garage door open during the day. Not anymore.

For Regina Havens, 42, a dental assistant who lives in San Bernardino and works on Hospitality Lane, the attack did more than drive home the need to close doors or windows.

It drove her to buy heavy-duty window locks.

“That little latch is just not going to do it anymore,” Havens said.

‘CRAZY WORLD’

The attack made Havens uneasy about opening drapes during the holidays.

The spike, which came in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 attack, moderated long ago. But sales trends remain above last year’s pace, Conway said, partly because people fear the state will one day confiscate firearms and partly because of San Bernardino.

“It brought the need for self defense to the forefront in a lot of people’s minds,” he said.

The attack jolted many, said Carla Rodriguez, secretary and chief financial officer for Starr-Al Limousine Service on Orange Show Road, little more than a stone’s throw from the Inland Regional Center.

“I never, ever thought this would happen here in San Bernardino,” Rodriguez said.

“It just wakes you up,” she said. “We live in a crazy world right now. We have to be cautious of everything.”

Dave is a general assignment reporter based in Riverside, writing about a wide variety of topics ranging from drones and El Nino to trains and wildfires. He has worked for five newspapers in four states: Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and California. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Colorado State University in 1981. Loves hiking, tennis, baseball, the beach, the Lakers and golden retrievers. He is from the Denver area.